May Speculative Fiction – One Hundred Million Dollar Man

One Hundred Million Dollar Man

He gazed in the mirror, examined the right side of his body. The crisscross intertwined wires on his arm and hand resembled the veins and blood vessels. Screws joined the wires at the junctures of the shoulder, elbow, wrist and finger joints. The metal on his right chest resembled the rib cage except it extended to the waistline. Inside the rib cage was a mercury-like lung. He smiled and switched the focus on the right arm, beamed with the left eye, zoomed in and out to magnify the images. He blinked and the zooming was gone. He blinked again, any movement of the dust in the air caused an acute alertness.

“Honey, your manager Mr. Pacheco is here.”

“Thank you, dear. I’ll be right there.” He folded the right hand into a fist with a squeeze, the skin on the face and the right side of his body closed with no trace of wires and metal.

“Hi Ron.”

“Xylon, let’s step outside to talk.”

Xylon crabbed a shirt to put on while walking outside.

“For the next fight, Mr. Marlow wants you to do a knockout in 15 seconds. That would put you on #1 of the Heavyweight Knockouts. He doesn’t want to mess around with the sissy exchanges.”

“No problem, Ron.”

“He also wants you to blow his brain out.”

“I can’t do that. His wife and my wife are friends.”

“You don’t have to kill him, just make sure he doesn’t bounce back.”

“I can do that much. I’m just not a killer.”

“You’re lucky. When the car crashed into the side of our car, it smashed half of your body. I phoned Mr. Marlow, and he instructed me to take you to Dr. Lebedev’s lab. Doc’s experiment was 1% from being perfect but Mr. Marlow wanted him to fix you anyway.”

“I’m thankful Doc saved my life.”

“We’ll take you to Dr. Lebedev for maintenance once a month. We can’t guarantee what you got is all you need to be alive. Mr. Marlow made a one hundred million dollar investment on you. He also made an investment on Dr. Lebedev’s research to perfect you.”

“I owe Mr. Marlow my life.”

“You do. He has great plans for you. He wants to pay a visit to the Federal Union Bank next Tuesday. Your eye will come in handy and you’ll unlock the code for the vault within 30 seconds.”

“This is going too far. I’m a fighter, not a criminal, Ron.”

“You don’t want to argue with Mr. Marlow. He saved you and wants your family to have a comfortable life.”

“What does it have anything to do with my family?”

“This is the end of our conversation. We’ll pick you up next Tuesday at 1:00 p.m.”

Thank you for reading, Rob. I’ve seen on news of parents as agents of the movie star grown-up child and basketball player grown-up child, they seemed to be as greedy as any agents or sponsors, money gets the worse side of human being.

My brother did boxing in his early years. There was one fight when his match was around 11:00 p.m. He felt asleep waiting and woke up for his turn. He wasn’t wide awake and got big blows. He quit after that. I couldn’t go see the fight.

Ah, yes, There is no free ride! I enjoyed every moment of this story. Poor Xylon sounds like originally he was a nice fellow. I think he’ll start wishing he wasn’t “saved” soon. Excellent story to Diana’s prompt!

Thank you for reading and comment, Pam. My husband went to see boxing the night I wrote this. His instructor was in the ring but lost the fight. It reminded me so much of fighters, singers, and actors having agents and sponsors. It’s a crazy world out there.

Great story, Miriam. What a situation for Ron. I have the feeling that things are going to get a lot worse for him. The poor guy. You really grabbed me with this story and it makes me want more! Thanks so much for taking up the prompt!

About me

Miriam Hurdle grew up in Hong Kong where she went to college and worked for five years before coming to the United States. While in Hong Kong, she taught Chinese as a Second Language in Hong Kong Baptist University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong for three years. She was also the Director of Children’s Department at the Asian Outreach where she published four Chinese Children’s books.
Miriam Hurdle came to the United States for her graduate studies. She received her master’s degrees in Christian Ministry from Portland Seminary, Counseling from Seattle Pacific University, and Education Administration from California State University, Los Angles. After teaching in California public school for fifteen years, she was promoted to a school district administrative position. She went on to do the postgraduate studies and earned her Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership from La Verne University in California. Dr. Hurdle continued in her administrative position for ten years before her retirement.
In her retired life, Dr. Hurdle enjoys doing volunteer counseling, reading, writing, blogging, singing, drawing, watercolor painting, gardening, photographing, and traveling. Dr. Hurdle is married to Lynton Hurdle and has one married daughter and one granddaughter.